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Las Vegas' Crazy Horse Too Finds Buyer

Tod HunterApr 24, 2008 10:00 AM PDT

LAS VEGAS — The U.S. Marshals Service has found a buyer for Crazy Horse Too, the strip club that was closed in July and seized in September as part of a plea deal with owner Rick Rizzolo on charges of racketeering, tax evasion and violence against customers.

The U.S. Marshals Service and CB Richard Ellis, the commercial real estate brokerage that was hired to sell the strip club, have not publicly identified the buyer but the Las Vegas Sun is reporting that the buyer is LCC Cafe Nevada, a limited liability corporation formed last week by Mahesh Patel, who operates strip clubs in North Carolina under the names Platinum Diamonds and Southern Xposure, and David Dupont, president of Estate Funding Inc., which calls itself “America’s most trusted mortgage resource,” based in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Dupont is said to have secured the financing.

According to the Sun, LCC Cafe Nevada quietly signed a contract with the government to purchase the club for more than $30 million several weeks ago.

Jace Radke, a spokesman for the city of Las Vegas, said Wednesday that the city “does not have a completed [Crazy Horse Too] application. Until the city accepts an application, with fees, and enters it into the system it is not a completed application."

The new owners must pass a police background check and open the club under a temporary liquor license by June 30. If that deadline is not met, the Crazy Horse Too loses its right to obtain a permanent liquor license by city ordinance. The liquor license is key to the club’s profitability.

As part of the sale agreement, sources told the Sun, LCC Cafe Nevada receives the rights to the Crazy Horse Too name at that location. Until it was closed, the Crazy Horse Too, on Industrial Road just off the Las Vegas Strip, was one of the area's most popular topless clubs. In 2005, Rizzolo, the owner at the time, said in a deposition that the club’s gross revenue was $800,000 to $1 million a month.

Rizzolo, who is barred from getting back into the topless club business under the terms of his plea agreement, was furloughed March 4 from a federal prison in Los Angeles. He served the final month of his sentence at a halfway house in Las Vegas, a few blocks south of the Crazy Horse Too.